Its shops may have been shut and its only route to market online, but Weird Fish seems to have schools of customers swimming in the digital world, with sales increasing more than 100 per cent.
So much so, that although it is excited to be reopening its actual high street shops next week, the 108 per cent increase in sales overall and 354 per cent up lift in online sales has given it a new focus.
The Tewkesbury headquartered fashion brand has turned its attention to ‘digital investment and focused development of its destination stores this year’.
John Stockton, managing director of Weird Fish, said: ‘Our digital progression was turbo-charged during lockdown. We expect that growth to continue as we add more new sustainable ranges in 2021.
‘We also know shoppers still crave an in-store experience, as our stores saw an overall 11 per cent rise in like-for-like sales uplift between July and August 2020.
‘We look forward to reopening our destination stores and continuing to develop and improve that much missed in store experience.’
Ben Mercier, customer director at Weird Fish, said: ‘We recognised the need to be agile throughout lockdown and continually adapt in line with changing market conditions, so decided to heavily invest in our digital channels and marketing throughout 2020.
‘A key element was developing a deeper understanding of our customers and their buying habits.’
As part of its digital investment, Weird Fish introduced Exponea as a customer management platform, allowing the brand high-quality audience data to implement key CRM initiatives and become more data-led.
A new YouTube channel was also launched, with dedicated video brand awareness campaigns across Weird Fish’s social networks.
Weird Fish also sees the brand value in aiming to make 80 per cent of its products sustainable by 2022.
By Andrew Merrell
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